Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/303

 uced, one of which was dated the 14th August, the other the 12th September, inviting members of the Congress to attend the meetings on the Tuesdays following the prospective dates, i.e., on the 20th August and 17th September.

The intimidation was alleged to have happened on the 12th August. The witness is said to have been sent for by Mahomed Camroodeen to Moosa’s office that day, where there were present M. C. Camroodeen, Dada Abdulla, Dowd Mahomed and two or three strangers. Here, it is alleged, he was asked certain questions about the case. And this the magistrate has connected with the Congress, in spite of the witness’s evidence to the effect that the Congress meetings are not held in Moosa’s office, that there was no circular inviting him to the meeting at Moosa’s office, that he did not attend the meetings convened in terms of the circulars, that the Congress meetings are held in the Congress Hall, that the circulars had nothing to do with the case, and that he was not present at the actual Congress meetings.

The only point that could in any way be used to support the Magistrate’s conclusion was the fact that three out of the six or seven men alleged to have been present at Moosa’s office were members of the Congress.

I beg to enclose herewith the extracts from the evidence bearing on the matter.

I venture to submit that, in some way or other, the Magistrate was biased. In the case of Poonoosamy Pather and three others, without a particle of evidence, he has remarked in his reasons for judgment that the defendants are members of and have been backed up by the Congress. As a matter of fact, all of them are not members of the Congress and the Congress had nothing whatever to do with the matter. As a great deal has been made of my instructing Mr. Millar in the Rungasamy case, I may mention that I had no connection whatever with the case of Poonoosamy and others, nor did I know, till after the case had far advanced towards the final stage, that there was such a case at all. My intervention was sought when Rungasamy was charged for the same offence for the second time and then, too, not in my capacity as Hon. Secretary of the Congress but as a lawyer.

I beg to assure the Government that the intention of the organizers of the Congress is to make the Congress an institution useful to both the communities in the Colony and a medium of interpretation of the feelings of the Indians on questions affecting them, and thus to help the existing Government and not to embarrass it, if it could embarrass it at all.